Restoration in Progress. We’ve returned the tavern to its original footprint, restoring a room that had been used for storage for decades. We’ll be seating there by Mother's Day...
Take your Mum for dinner. Mother’s Day Reservations are available to book on Resy. We’ll be opening at 4pm for an early seating. You can also arrange to surprise her with a bouquet from Six Dutchess Farm on arrival, pre-order here.
Spring Picnic for Sky High Farm. On May 18th, the team at SHF is hosting a supersized picnic at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park benefitting Sky High Farm's work to solve urgent & long-term issues at the intersection of climate, food access, & education. Tickets are sold on a sliding scale with special gifts for higher tiers, including custom SHF merch,
music by Moses Sumney and Kelsey Lu, a picnic by us and more…
See you on Substack. We’re moving Stissing World over to Substack so you can have access to archives and information on upcoming feasts. No need to resubscribe - see you in a month!
Our Fish Pie is filled with halibut and hearth-smoked wild salmon.
We have a deep admiration for Sky High Farm, our Pine Plains neighbor, founded by artist Dan Colen. When they began in 2012, they saw food sovereignty as their north star, and they committed to donating 100% of their produce and proteins to local organizations that re-distribute the food to individuals and families who need support.
Their mission is only getting bigger.
We hope you’ll join us in supporting the work they’re doing by purchasing tickets to their Spring Picnic Fundraiser on Saturday May 18 (two of their ticket tiers include a
Stissing House picnic!).
In 2020, Sky High Farm partnered with Dover Street Market New York and individual brands across fashion, art and design to create a line of wearable goods. Perhaps not surprisingly, demand and sales were strong. What if they could create an entity that could be malleable and responsive and engage people on a cultural level to care about the mission of Sky High Farm? Enter Sky High Farm Universe (SHFU), formed in 2022. In a world where only 4% of donations to non-profits come from corporate entities, SHFU (a brand) was created specifically to be in service of the farm (a non-profit). On the heels of making the cover of the New York Times Style section, we caught up with Co-CEO and CMO Daphne Seybold of SHFU to learn more about their unique role and why they hope to be a model for the future.
Daphne is no stranger to the world of brand marketing, having led communications and marketing for Comme des Garcons and Dover Street Market. While neither of them had eyes on starting a for profit business, through the success of their 2020 collaboration, both Daphne and Dan were “intrigued by the idea of a brand being a vehicle or vessel for the farm’s message that could generate advocacy but also raise sustaining revenue through the purchase of highly consumptive goods,” Daphne said. At a time when there was such tumult in the world, Daphne never felt more assured about leaving her corporate role and leveraging her skills for the greater good. Since forming SHFU, both she and Dan have expertly leveraged their relationships with influential friends to harness their product design and storytelling expertise to support the mission of Sky High Farm–most have lent their talent for no fee.
“We’re trying to illustrate through leadership what a modern company can look like if we actually prioritize those most in need, as opposed to shareholders,” said Daphne. They’ve structured the entire SHFU business, once profitable, around giving back–first to the farm, second to employees, third to underwriting discounts and donations to the farm’s community, and finally to shareholders. Partially through the support of SHFU, the farm is able to offer grants ($600K to date) to regenerative farmers around the globe, a fellowship program providing practical training and education, educational programming for youth and, soon, an incubator farm for established farm businesses where access to land is required but not available to them. To date, the brand has generated a donation of over $690K for the farm through special partnerships, facilitated donor relationships and its wholesale donation program, which renders every retailer and customer a donor.
“This work, yes, is situated in the Hudson Valley, but the reality is that these are global issues that everyone can relate to. Sometimes the issues are slightly different, but we’re all sharing the same planet and we feel this sense of urgency around climate change and food insecurity, and also see that we can play a role in alleviating a lot of the inequity that we witness.” They would love nothing more than to tackle these pressing issues by having the SHFU model replicated around the world. In the meantime, support the cause here!
Read more below about the impact that Sky High Farm is making in a conversation with Co-Executive Directors Josh Bardfield and Sarah Workneh.
You have an exciting new development that involves moving from your current 40 acre plot in Pine Plains to 560 acres a few miles down the road.
Can you share how you plan to utilize that larger footprint?
The new property allows us to double our impact–in our capacity to cultivate more produce and protein, and in ways which restore our local ecosystem and address climate resilience more broadly. It also allows us to deepen our food access and education partnerships and has allowed us to develop new ones–collaborative partnerships are the bedrock of our work.
We’re currently transitioning the new property from conventionally managed cropland to adaptive pastures, croplands and woodlands, which are more resilient & responsive to a changing climate. To start, we’ve planted cover crops into corn and soy fields to improve soil health and support future vegetable cultivation, native grasses for grazing animals, and pasture diversity on nearly 200 acres. All of the work on the physical property itself sets the stage for our vegetable and livestock production. Healthy soil and healthy ecosystems
promote healthier food.
Through integrated biological monitoring, such as measuring soil carbon, fungal and microbial diversity, pasture health, water & air quality, and bird & pollinator habitats, we’ll be equipped to track and respond to the health of the property and also demonstrate the positive impact of our practices over time. Both the scale and the condition of the property make this research novel and potentially impactful as we chart this significant transition. Our goal is to use a participatory research approach to make our data and outcomes widely accessible to share with other farmers and the surrounding community.
Can you share a memorable success story that resulted from one of your
grants to a farmer?
During our pilot year (2022) of the Sky High Farm grants program, we had the opportunity to fund a project by Utē Petit, an artist and land steward who is building an ancestral garden, small farm, playground, and energy park to honor her family, and the community ancestry of the lower 9th ward in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Popsie & Vivian’s Lowland Garden is named for Utē’s Grandfather Frank “Popsie” Petit and his mother (Utē’s Great Grandmother) Vivian Petit. Utē’s grandmother Vivian lived on this land until her house was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of the storm, her property was, in part, stolen by the State of Louisiana through a predatory homeowner program called the Road Home Program.
Since then, Utē has stewarded the land through a land lease with the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority’s "Growing Green" program. She’s focused on addressing the continued erasure of Afro-Indigenous peoples from their cultural landscapes in New Orleans, and she sees this farm not only as a place where heritage foods, medicines, and cultural crops will be grown, but as a part of a wider cooperative akin to the Freedom Quilting Bees of Alabama. In April 2024, the first of four plots became eligible for purchase from the City of New Orleans and Sky High Farm made a subsequent grant to Utē to execute that purchase, which will happen this year.
How did you approach the production and collaborations for the Spring Picnic Fundraiser and how (financially) important is this event to your annual fundraising efforts for Sky High Farm?
Our fundraising event on May 18 is a true collaboration between Sky High Farm (501c3) and Sky High Farm Universe (the brand) created to uplift and support Sky High Farm’s work. We are a small team at the farm, so our colleagues at the brand have taken on the enormous job of managing production and securing incredible performers and corporate sponsors. We would not have been able to execute such a dynamic event on this scale without their support. When we first conceived of the idea to bring several hundred people together for a day of celebration, the goal - beyond financial - was rooted in a longer-term strategy of elevating our mission, raising awareness around our ambitious agenda, and celebrating our partnerships in the Hudson Valley. Ticket sales and corporate sponsorships will fund the groundwork for the new property over the next year, but the festival allows us to bring together such a diverse group of partners to join in our work, and offers the chance for a larger public to engage with our work to challenge the social, political and economic barriers to food and climate justice.
Beyond having a great time, what do you hope people take away from attending
the Spring Picnic?
A sense of community; an entrypoint to learning more about our work. A broad based enthusiasm for trying to solve these problems.
Determining how and where to contribute to social justice, political and environmental causes can sometimes feel overwhelming–there is endless need. In the spirit of “one small change (or act),” what are some things you would encourage people to do on a personal level to contribute to food sovereignty?
Support your local farmer
Volunteer in your community
Read a good book
Take the time to understand the food system
Attend community events
Talk to your neighbors
Get involved in local civic institutions
The most difficult part of your job and the best part of your job:
The most difficult and the best parts are almost the same: trying to find new ways of addressing long entrenched inequities. Believing that human agency can effectively change structural issues in real and immediate ways is an optimism we hope to share and evidence more broadly. But even for us, we have to work to remember it's possible. Also getting to spend time outdoors, touching the soil and having such close proximity to other
living creatures on the farm.
A future dream Sky High Farm collab:
Transportation is a challenge in the Hudson Valley for many people, including many of our food access partners. We would love to partner with a company to make a fleet of electric refrigerated trucks that farms and food access organizations could affordably purchase to help build and make easier those critical relationships between farms and individuals and families who need access to healthy & fresh food.